Students Win Awards at BEA Festival of Media Arts

March 4, 2019

The winning Al Día team

Cal State Fullerton communications students have won two awards at the Broadcast Education Association Festival of Media Arts, an international digital media and broadcast competition with more than 300 participating schools and 1,500-plus entries from around the globe.

Nathan Jeffers, Kevin Tran and Jeffrey Whitten were excited to receive second place in sound engineering and production for their work on "Titan Radio Live!" featuring Rat Soup.

"When I got the email saying that I got second place for audio production, I was shocked," said Tran. "Knowing that I got second helped me believe that I should continue pursuing audio production after I graduate … and I plan to."

Episode one of the news magazine Al Día won the Award of Excellence in the television news magazine category. The student team was comprised of Darwin Ayala, Viviana Borroel, Jessica Cardenas, Victor Cholico, Adeyling Fiallos, Xochilt Lagunas, Rita La Vau, Alfonso Manrique, Alans Torres and Brenda Villa.Students working on Al Día have been the first CSUF group to produce a long-form TV news magazine, so winning an award is significant.

"The BEA competition attracts the best journalism schools," remarked Al Día adviser Jesús Ayala. "I am most proud of having bilingual journalism entries [in the competition] because it shows others that it’s important to do bilingual work and important to recognize it."

There will be a free screening of the winning Al Día episode April 23 at 6:30 p.m. at the Titan Theatre as part of Communications Week; all are welcome to attend.